The momentous cost of Bomber Command.

[Kutscha]

So Tony, the American bombers (B-17, B-24, B-29) were also a massive waste?

ETO losses
B-17 - 4,754
B-24 - 2,112

That is almost the same as the number of Lancs built.

Britain won against Napoleon by defeating his army in the field and occupying Paris.

Only because of the massive amounts of money was spent on the RN. Was the RN a waste?

One German leader (Speer?) said that the SBC cost the Germans 30% of its manufacturing production. That is 30% more guns, tanks, airplanes that the 1,000, 000 persons that the Germans had manning the Flak, fighting fires, clearing rubble and so on that could have been better used on the front lines defending the Reich.

How were the petro and chemical industries to be knocked out without the bombers?

What did it cost the Soviets in their tactical ground war against the Germans? Would the British population have supported such massive causalities?

[tcolvin]

Andreij.
Richard Overy in “Why The Allies Won” argues your point that the strategic offensive played a significant role in defeating Germany by diverting essential manpower and weapons from the fighting fronts to homeland defence.
But this argument is a rationalisation.
And Overy never calculated the high cost of BC.

It cost Britain £2,911 to drop one ton of bombs, and much more than £6,000 to kill one German civilian.
The cost of a Churchill tank was £11,150 - two dead German civilians, or 3 tons of bombs.
The Churchill tank was a much more effective and much cheaper weapon than area bombing, which had little effect at vast cost.

Tony

[Andrei Demjanko]

Tony

BC not only killed civilians, but damaged industry and property far from the front lines and disrupted German economy. Production of tanks in great numbers could not inflict comparable ammount of damage and casualties upon the enemy.

[SES]

War is not a question of how much one kill or destroy and what it cost. War is a question of inflicting the effect desired on the enemy centers of gravity.
The Strategic Bomber Offensive had a tremendous direct and indirect impact on the entire Wehrmacht's ability to wage war. There was loss of production of every sort of weapons systems, POL and diversion of manpower and resources to air defence.
BC was instrumental in the delay of the operational introduction of V-Weapons.
From late 1944 fuel was a major - if not THE major limitation in the Wehrmacht's ability to conduct operation. This limitation had been achieved through strategic bombing.
bregds
SES

[Laurent Rizzotti]

Hi,

To be complete, you have to estimate the cost of BC and fighting against BC for Germans:
_ direct military losses (at least 3000 NJG aircraft lost, and 3000 aircrew killed, thousand more of soldiers killed in strategic raids).
_ military resources used against BC (thousand of guns, millions of shells, etc...)
_ manpower hours lost, or used to repair railyards/factories hit by raids.
_ production lost during the dispersion of factories.

I agree that until the summer of 1943, Bomber Command was not able to really hit hard Germany economy, but starting from there, it was able to devastate cities (starting with Hamburg) on an increasing rate. I guess that the devastation of Hamburg had a net impact on German war production.
But before 1943, having thousand more tanks will be of little use for Britain too.

[Tapper]

Interesting thread, can I also throw into the pot another thing to consider.

Without wishing to travel into the emotive subject of Dresden too deep as it generally ends in a big argument, I am in favour of the theory that Dresden was mainly to show the Russians that the massive city destroying capability of BC existed and would be unleashed against them if they carried on into France when Germany was beaten.

The cost has been pointed out but what cost can you put on winning a war?

[Nick Beale]

Wars are colossal wastes of material, let alone human life. Why else would the exceptions, where the pinpoint target was hit, the crackshot, the ace be so celebrated? These were the exceptions.

Were fighters worth building when the majority of pilots never shot anything down? Most torpedo aircraft never scored a hit, were they worth building? Were ships worth it when most escort sank a U-boat? Were armies worth it when postwar studies showed a high percentage of infantry never even fired their rifles? When most landmines were never trodden on, sea mines never struck?

The point was not what the war or any aspect of it cost in money, for Britain in 1940–42 it was the determination to do whatever it took to hit the enemy. With France out of the war, the arithmetic was transformed and the course embarked on then is wholly understandable. Britain could never raise a field army big enough alone to defeat a German one (too great a population disparity). The RN couldn't overcome the military capacity of a continental power occupying the greater part of Europe to its West and occupying or allied to everything to its east. And the people who'd been Blitzed understandably wanted to hit back.

I suspect that a partial dilution of BC's strength in favour of Coastal Command might have done Britain more good c. 1941–43 than sending that extra (say) 100 machines over Germany. Clearly there was obstinacy over various elements of strategy, tactics and equipment (highlighted by Max hastings and Bill Gunston amongst others) but hitting German with the means at Britain's disposal was a rational choice in the circumstances of the time. The later insistence on hitting cities with a force that had meanwhile developed enough accuracy to hit oil targets etc. is what I find inexplicable.

[pstrany]

I had the privilege of doing an interview with John Kenneth Galbraith many years ago (he was one of the authors of the USSBS.)

As regards Hamburg, Mr. Galbraith pointed out that the Germans were very slow to mobilize their war production. Hamburg was a thriving city, with a great deal of civilian economic activity. Once Hamburg was bombed, all that civilian infrastructure was destroyed, so that all the shopkeepers, hairdressers and other non-military activity ceased. As Mr. Galbraith put it, the British created an idle workforce. The Germans, realizing this, put them to work in military industries.

Keep in mind that peak German military industrial output came not in 1941, but in 1944, after several years of BC attention. That is not to say that they accomplished nothing, but just that they did not single-handedly bring down the German war machine.

One other note, both Mr. Galbraith and several other sources pointed out that German war production could have been brought to its knees fairly quickly if Bomber Command had focused on the power grid in Germany. Aside from the raids on the Ruhr dams, very little effort was made to destroy German ability to generate and distribute power to factories throughout the Reich.

Any weapon can be effective, but only if it is used properly.......

Paul

[Jan Gazda]

Tony,

To answer your original question first no critical review of Fahey’s book is known to me. As for the conclusions you’ve made:

1. I totally agree with you that given the vast resources at its disposal BC’s contribution to the ultimate victory inadequate although by no means negligible. Had the only goal been to defeat Germany as quickly as possible then BC would be a horribly inefficient tool. However, there was broader strategic planning at work there. In terms of casualties BC’s campaign was a cheap way of showing good will to Russians. It enabled Churchill to stand by and watch Russians and Germans to slaughter themselves which he undoubtedly enjoyed. From this point of view bombing Germany for four years from 15 000 feet above was a very smart thing to do.

2. I can not agree with you that BC’s campaign or even WWII bankrupted Britain. Surely there was some loss of wealth as in most wars and yes, Britain was in huge debt after the war, but so were most other countries and this situation had been there before. War debt did not make UK the sick man of Europe as there were many other and more important factors at play that caused steady decline of Britain’s economy. The only country that really got bankrupted by the WWII was Soviet Russia. For many reasons combined it was unable to ever fully recover from the damage war brought about. The GDP per capita gap between USSR and the West kept widening after WWII which finally led to collapse of the Soviet block.


Jan

[Nick Beale]

Originally Posted by Jan Gazda

It enabled Churchill to stand by and watch Russians and Germans to slaughter themselves which he undoubtedly enjoyed.

Are you seriously suggesting that Britain alone could have raised and equipped an army sufficient to take on the Germans in Western Europe and win? Britain's entry to the war was predicated on an alliance with France and its (on paper) very powerful armed forces. When the greater part of those forces were taken off the board, Germany and the USSR were still in a non-aggression pact. Other than surrender, what were the viable options for Britain at that time?

I think you might also find that, at considerable cost, Britain and the USA poured material support of all kinds into the USSR to sustain it against Germany.